Conventional Energy Generation
Of some relevance to the various embodiments and processes disclosed herein are the current state of art and concepts associated with energy generation, fluid flow, buoyancy, the properties of fluids, gravity, gravitational potential energy, conservation of energy, and in particular the direct conversion of potential energy into electrical power. These topics will be briefly discussed to provide sufficient background to support theoretical implication, and practical explanations of the embodiments and processes disclosed herein.
Large scale energy generation can arguably be considered the most important accomplishment of mankind, and in particular, the introduction of practical electrical generators by Tesla at the turn of the late 19th to early 20th century marked a significant milestone in history characterized by the wild expansion of ideas that change the world and the life experience of the average human being. Now at the beginning of the 21st century we face a number of problems that may threaten the human race and the ecosystems on the planet. Chief among those problems are environmental pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels, a growing need for energy, and the exponential growth of the planet's population.
On the planet today the great bulk of power generated is based on the burning of fossil fuel, with a much lower fraction of the total planetary power coming from nuclear fission, and hydroelectric power sources as shown below in FIG. 1A.
Fossil fuel power generation facilities, while in wide spread use, generate various pollutants such as CO2 (greenhouse gases), fly ash, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, and the waste heat pollution that can affect lakes, rivers, and streams. Fossil fuel generation also has drawbacks associated with limited availability and the cost of extracting and transporting the natural resources (i.e. coal, oil, gas) to the power plant location. Lastly fossil fuel generating plants contribute to an overall increase in CO2 in the atmosphere with the resulting increase in the planet's mean temperature (global warming). Nuclear power reactors on the other hand produce long and short life nuclear waste products which must be stored and managed (long term) after the original fuel rods have become depleted. Finally there is the ever present danger that a nuclear reactor could become unstable or damaged, as was the case with Chernobyl Russian reactors, Three Mile Island in the US, and the Fukushima-Daiichi reactors in Japan. Solar energy, while renewable and clean, is subject to lack of availability during night time hours. Similarly, energy from wind generation is not constantly available since it is subject to the unpredictability of weather patterns. Both solar and wind generators require substantial areas of the earth's surface to generate power levels equivalent to state of the art fossil and nuclear plants. For these reasons, many industrial experts do not considered solar and wind generation as truly viable replacements for fossil and nuclear generation plants. Lastly geothermal and hydroelectric, while both clean and able to produce abundant power, are generally limited geographically to a few commercially feasible sites that can be made commercially productive. Hence there is an urgent need on the planet for an efficient, cheap, reliable, pollution free, energy dense, renewable energy source that can be built at any location, that is scalable to meet any size power requirement, and that is available at all times.
Buoyancy Engines, Gravity Engines
A buoyancy engine, for the purposes of this application can be defined as a device that attempts to utilize the forces of buoyancy (but not the gravitational forces) to generate motive force and power. A survey of applicable literature turns up a number of buoyancy engines that strive to utilize dense fluids such as water and properties of buoyant-objects, and air bubbles in particular, to displace the dense fluid so as to generate the upward force of buoyancy. The field of buoyance engines will be addressed in general terms, and specific references addressed when appropriate, in the next paragraphs.
Generally speaking prior art searches show that most buoyance devices utilize compressed air in some form to function. Very commonly compressed air is injected at the bottom of a fluid tank, where air bubbles impinge on, and collect under, a series of linked and connected mechanical surfaces, such as an inverted bucket. The mechanical surfaces are generally arranged in a circular fashion, and often in the form of one or more large wheels, so as to force the mechanical surface attached to the moving wheel upward under the force of buoyancy. The air bubbles are then dumped at the top of the fluid tank by an inversion of the mechanical surfaces, which are then propelled back down through the same tank of fluid as the wheel continues to turn. In nearly all cases the working fluid is generally water, but mercury is occasionally mentioned. In most of these patents the buoyancy of the mechanical surface is modified by the air bubbles that collect under its surface such that the composite surface plus air bubbles become buoyant with the addition of the air bubbles. The downward force of gravity does not make a significant contribution to the energy output since the wheels and other mechanical connections to the wheel are generally balanced and do not move under the influence of gravity when no compressed air is being generated. Buoyancy engines of this type include an early reference by Cook in 1883, patent no. 271,040, followed by more recent entries including: Bokel U.S. Pat. No. 4,326,132, Jackson U.S. Pat. No. 4,407,130, Simpson U.S. Pat. No. 4,981,015, Murata U.S. Pat. No. 6,269,638, Kittle U.S. Pat. No. 6,447,243, and Brumfield pub. no. 2010/0095666. In each of these cases the motive force driving the mechanical device is the force of buoyancy generated by the air bubbles that are injected into the device. An important note is that a considerable amount of energy is required by such devices to generate the pressurized air, and this energy debit must be subtracted from any net energy that may or may not be produced by these devices.
Two devices by Dennis De Shon are worthy of consideration, they include U.S. Pat. No. 4,713,937 (Dec. 22, 1987) and U.S. Pat. No. 4,742,242 (May 3, 1988). According to both patents De Shon uses buoyant capsules instead of air to activate the forces of buoyancy. In his first patent: U.S. Pat. No. 4,713,937, the capsules are injected into the bottom of a tank of fluid (mercury) via an air lock (which implies it uses compressed air to displace the mercury in the airlock), imping on a series of mechanical surfaces and geared wheels, not unlike the patents mentioned above, and then removes the capsules at the top. There is however no explanation as to how the buoyant capsules are injected into the fluid, or how said capsules are taken from the top of the fluid tank to be replaced at the bottom of the tank (i.e. no fluid interface mechanism). In his second patent: U.S. Pat. No. 4,742,242 De Shon provides a mechanism to inject a series of “gas-filled linked lifting bodies” into the bottom of a fluid tank, but requires the use of computer controlled compressed air injection to make the crossing of the fluid interface possible. Again this requires considerable energy to create the continuous stream of compressed air. Both devices utilize buoyancy as the motive force, and do not make significant use of gravity.
In a recent patent application by James Kwok, patent application publication number US2010/0307149, Dec. 9, 2010, the embodiments disclosed use compressed air to inflate or deflate a flexible membrane based “buoyant means” within a tank of fluid, (typically water), which displaces the fluid when inflated, so as to change the overall buoyancy of the “buoyant means” as a function of time. Kwok uses a number of somewhat complicated mechanical connections, gears, pulleys and weights to provide mechanical motion from the “buoyant means” that in turn drives a shaft, which drives an electrical generator. One of the significant limitations of this device is that the embodiments again utilize compressed air to change the buoyancy of the “inflatable capsule” and hence require significant energy to generate the compressed air. In addition the “inflatable capsule” or buoyant means must be driven back to the bottom of the fluid tank resulting in additional energy loss due to the viscosity of the fluid.
Compressed air used by these embodiments displaces the working fluid (e.g. water), but at the same time is also subject to the ideal gas law to first order (PV=nRT). This law can be expressed as P2/P1=V2/V1 when the temperature T and number of molecules/atoms n of gas is known or fixed (as in a single air bubble or compressible buoyant-object). If the water pressure is increased by a factor of ten from the top of the tank/column of water to the bottom, then the new pressure at the bottom P2, divided by the original pressure at the top (P2/P1), will be equal to 10 and will, by the perfect gas law, decrease the volume at the top V1 to the new volume V2 at the bottom of the tank. Hence if V2/V1 is 1/10th of its original volume then P2/P1 is equal to 10 (the reciprocal of the pressure gain). But water is basically an incompressible fluid, so its volume does not substantially change when compressed, however the air bubble/volume, as just described, compresses considerably. Hence when an air bubble's volume is compressed when at the bottom of a tank of water by the height of the water overhead by a factor of 10×, then the volume of the air bubble shrinks by a factor of 10. This means that the water displaced by the smaller air bubble is decreased by a factor of 10. Practically speaking this means that the resultant buoyancy force acting on the air bubble at the bottom of the tank is 10 times less than it is at the top of the tank/column. Similarly a 100 fold increase in pressure on the air bubble due to increased tank depth implies that only 1% of the fluid volume is displaced by the same bubble at the bottom of this deeper tank, and therefore only 1% of the buoyancy power and force can be generated by this much smaller air bubble near the bottom of the tank.
Water, which is the typical dense fluid used in these devices, is compressed by gravity such that the pressure increases by 1 psi for every 2.31 feet of increased depth (head). Therefore it takes only 23 feet of water to decrease the volume of an air bubble to 1/10 of its surface size, and one tenth of its effective buoyancy. The utility and efficiency of compressed air for use as water displacement to generate buoyancy continues to decrease with depth as shown in FIG. 1B. The conclusion is that buoyancy embodiments which directly utilize compressed air, such as those illustrated by prior art discussed above, quickly become less effective and less efficient as the tank fluid depth/water column height is increased (i.e. the power generated by compressed air does not scale well with water depth). Hence, according FIG. 1B, such embodiments are practically limited to water depths on the order of about twenty feet or less, where the force of buoyance at the bottom of the water tank/column is still at least 1/10th of what it would be at the surface.
A major conceptual and practical draw back exists for any buoyancy embodiments that require compressed air (or must generate compress air) to function. The compressed air that is injected or transferred within the system consumes energy, and the amount of energy expended increases with water pressure and water height. Generally speaking the energy cost of compressing and or transferring the air must be subtracted from the overall energy equation associated with the device. Hence the effect is that the net energy gain from the embodiment (if any) is greatly reduced by the energy required to generate the compressed air.
A further limitation of buoyancy devices, besides that fact that they do not scale well with water depth, and the fact that they require relatively large expenditures of energy to operate (e.g. to compress air), is that they only take advantage of the forces of buoyancy and generally do not take advantage of the forces of gravity, as is done by a water wheel, or a generalized gravity wheel. In a water wheel, which has been around for thousands of years, elevated water impinges upon the peripheral surfaces, or buckets of a central wheel that is attached to a central axis. The turning central axis can be used directly to generate mechanical energy, as in a flower mill, or as is commonly done today, the central axis can be attached to an electrical generator such as those deployed by Tesla at the turn of the century at Niagara Falls, near Buffalo N.Y. (e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 447,921). In a generalized gravity wheel the principles are typically the same, except that the impinging water can be replaced by any fluid type (air, water, oil, etc.), or any solid object that impinges upon the central wheel (e.g. a series of heavy falling spheres, or a stream of pebbles that impinge upon the central wheel's surfaces and turn the central axis), not just water.
Finally an examination of US patent application publication no. 2012/0198833, by Francis, published Aug. 9, 2012, attempts to combine a buoyancy engine with a gravity engine. Francis relies on alleged surplus energy supplied by an elevated buoyant “ball” that is lifted by the force of buoyancy to “insert” said “ball” into the bottom of a buoyant column of fluid, and to allegedly perform the “ball reset” function of the device with no external energy input. A simple energy analysis of this patent shows that the proposed device is non-functional. It is however instructional to review an energy analysis of the Francis device, as such an analysis can enable an understanding of the inventive concepts disclosed herein, and in particular an important principle of this application, namely that the heart of an energy generation device may be a fluid interface device, as disclosed herein. Such a fluid interface device is particularly energy efficient, non-obvious, governed by the laws of conservation of energy, and enables buoyancy and gravity to do work and liberate surplus energy under very select conditions.
While it may be possible to use buoyancy to lift a ball, and gravity to convert the height gained to energy via a gravity wheel, it must be done such that there is a net energy gained, otherwise there is no possible energy that can be extracted from the system. It is fairly easy to show that US 2012/0198833 will never generate an energy surplus as described, that there is insufficient energy to run and move the embodiment as shown in US 2012/0198833 FIG. 2 (“Francis FIG. 2”), and that the embodiment cannot mechanically function as described. Consider the following:
In paragraph [0031] Francis states “the piston 216 can insert the buoyant balls 202 into the buoyant column”, without any further explanation and without out further mechanical means. Given only a piston to insert the ball into the fluid column, it is necessary for the geared gravity wheel in this case to pull the piston rod and piston out sufficiently such that the ball can drop into an exposed opening in the piston's housing or enclosure. The exposed opening in the piston housing must be in fluid communication with the bottom of the fluid column if the ball is to be inserted, and therefore without other mitigating mechanical means, the pressure from the standing column of fluid will immediately begin a pressurized flow of fluid from the piston enclosure's opening. The rate of fluid flow will be in proportion to the pressure at the bottom of the fluid column, the diameter of the ball opening, and the height of the fluid column. The ball having dropped from a small height, having used most of its kinetic energy to turn the “drive wheel”, and being buoyant will not completely submerge by itself, especially with pressurized fluid leaking from the housing. That is, since the ball is buoyant, part of the ball's surface will be above the water line represented in this case by the fluid level in the opening of the piston housing. Hence it will be difficult if not impossible for the piston to close with the ball above the water line even if there is no water leaking form the piston housing. With the piston housing leaking enormous amounts of water under pressure, the ball will be pushed out of the enclosure opening by the pressurized fluid flow, hence there is no way to force the ball into the piston without further mechanical means, which has not been disclosed by Francis.
Additionally this leaked water must be replaced, and to replace it will require pumping the fluid to the top of the holding tank (pump no defined). The elevation of this leaked fluid requires an enormous amount of energy which must be subtracted from the energy balance of the system. The fluid that has leaked, if not replaced, will cause the buoyant fluid column to collapse and the fluid pressure at the bottom of the fluid column to diminish. There can be no working embodiment with a collapsed fluid column, no ball to enter the fluid column, and no driving force of buoyancy without the pressure difference between the top and bottom of the fluid column.
When the buoyant fluid is water, the pressure at the bottom of the fluid column will be 1 pound per square inch (PSI) for every 2.3 feet of water in the column. This water pressure acts on the surface area of the piston even when the enclosure's housing is not leaking, so as to always force the piston backward with a force proportional to this pressure. This initial force pushing back on the piston must be overcome by the force generated by a “dropped ball”, if the “drive wheel 208” is ever to move and rotate (see Francis FIG. 2). As a concrete example, consider the case of the embodiment per US 2012/0198833 which has been configured to be 20 ft tall 4 inch in diameter fluid column with a 4 inch buoyant ball. The 20 ft of water generate 20 ft/2.31 psi/ft=8.66 PSI. A 4 inch ball and 4 inch piston has a cross sectional surface area of PI*diameter=12.6 inches squared. Therefore the ball or piston will have a force pushing on it of 12.6*8.66=108.8 pounds. This is 108 pounds of force that will attempt to be forced into the piston enclosure's open at all times and it is 108 pounds of force that must be overcome by the “ball” when being dropped into the piston. On the other hand a 4 inch ball will displace 1.2 pounds of water, and to be buoyant it must weigh less than 1.2 pounds. Given that force of gravity produces in this case less than 1.2 pounds of force for each ball, even with the combined force from several ball drops, there is no possibility that the downward force of gravity can overcome the force of the flowing water coming out of the piston enclosure opening so as to insert the ball into the piston, nor is it possible for the “drive wheel” to begin to turn without addition 108 pounds of external applied force and other associated mechanical means. Increasing the size of the ball only increase the amount of water leaking from the piston and therefore the force on the ball or the piston will increase as will the amount of water leakage. Decreasing the height of the water column only reduces the height and potential energy that the ball can obtain. A more general analysis could be under taken to show that there is no combination of fluid height or ball size which would permit US 2012/0198833 to function as written.
In paragraph [0032] Francis states, “one skilled in the art will appreciate that there are other methods of inserting a buoyant ball 202 into buoyant column 212 are contemplated herein. For example, the bottom portion of the buoyant column 212 can be isolated, using a horizontal divider or some other method. The buoyant fluid 214 can be removed from the bottom portion of the buoyant column 212 and the ball can be inserted.” First of all this description of the proposed apparatus is incredible vague and it is not apparent how a “horizontal divider or other method actually is assembled and made to function. More importantly this method, if the applicant utilizes sufficient imagination, describes a process that requires more energy to remove the water from the isolated bottom, drained fluid column, than will be gained by the ball being elevated. The means by which it is drained and how the separation would occur is a complete mystery. First consider that the water removed must be replaced by pumping an equal quality to the top of the fluid column if more than one ball is to use the column repeatedly. The energy required to lift and removed the water from a section of the bottom can be calculated from the gravitational potential energy MGH increase of the water required to be replaced, where M is the mass or weight of the water column that must be replaced, G is the gravitational constant and H is the height of the fluid column. On the other hand the energy gained by the ball is also given by MGH, but this time the M is the mass of the ball. For energy to be gained by the ball over that of the water removed the ratio of these two terms (the energy gained by ball/energy required to water replacement) must be greater than one—which is a measure of the energy efficiency of the process. That is after removing the common G and H from the ratio we get Massball/Massremoved-water-from-column>1. But the density and mass of the ball to float must always be less than the density of the water that surrounds it and therefore the mass of surrounding water is always greater than the ball if the ball is going to float. Hence there must always be a greater volume of water removed to insert the ball into the column in the first place, therefore this ratio is always greater than 1 no matter how high the fluid column and no matter what the size ball utilized. This means the process as described always losses energy. Again consider the same example where the water column is a cylinder of height 20 ft of diameter 4 inches and where the ball is 4 inch in diameter. The proposed process of isolating and removing the water volume of a cylinder of 4 inch diameter and 4 inch height involves water volume=PI*(D/2)2*H=50.26 in3 which weighs 1.82 lbs. The energy required to lift and replacement the water is therefore (1.8)*G*H. Energy gained by lifting the 4 inch ball to height H given it weighs 1.2 lbs if filled with water and if 75% loaded (loading to be explained in later sections of this application) we have for the energy gained=(0.75*1.2)*G*H=0.9*G*H. The energy gained in the process is therefore the energy gained from the ball elevation minus the cost of replacing the water=(0.9-1.8)*G*H=−0.9*G*H. Hence the overall process described in [0032] losses energy with each ball by an amount of −0.9*G*H, since the above number is negative. The ratio for the cylindrical fluid column of 4 inches with 4 inch ball is then 0.9/1.8 or 50%, and this is related to the overall efficiency of the process which can be said to take 50% more energy than is gained by the elevation of the ball. Clearly the process of paragraph [0032] can never be used to generate power.
Similarly it can be shown that the process described in [0033] which consists of lifting the entire weight of the fluid column by way of a vacuum to insert the ball will “cost” even more energy than process described by [0033] (removing a portion of the fluid column and replacing it). Hence its efficiency is worse than that of [0033] which is already producing a loss of 50% of the power generated by the ball when fully elevated.
It is also clear from the above analysis that 2012/0198833 will never generate a surplus of power given any of the injection means described therein, and clearly the device depicted and described in Francis FIG. 2 cannot function since it will be unable to insert said buoyant ball, nor turn “energy wheel” 208b. Given the embodiment described cannot move or function without an external source of power, and given that the described means cannot be used to generate power the entire objective of the patent 2012/0198833 is in question.
Other limitations of 2012/0198833 include:
1. The ability to work, as far as it does, applies only to a “ball” or spherical shaped buoyant-object that can roll down the various ramps, but fall vertically downward.
2. The device shown in Francis FIG. 2 is mechanically complicated which makes it subject to reliability problems and significant frictional losses due to the described gears and connections.
3. The energy wheel 208a only captures half of the energy gained by the ball, which we have shown takes a loss with each cycle of the device. That is, there is no means shown to convert the full potential energy gained by the buoyant ball's elevation into energy. As shown in Francis FIG. 2 only about half of the energy gained can be utilized since 208a is located half way up the device, and the other half (208b) must be used to drive the piston or implement some other means which has also been shown not to be workable. The overall efficiency of the device of Francis FIG. 2 (if it really operated) goes down to 25% or less if the best process given by paragraph [0032] is used to inject said ball. This means that in the best case, if Francis FIG. 2 could be made to work, 75% more energy must be supplied into the system for every ball cycled through the device. Since there is no external source of power the embodiment will not function.
Contrast Between Rotational and Linear Power Generation
Most commercial electrical energy generations facilities in use today capitalize on the rotational motion of magnetics or magnetic fields generated by magnet wire to create time changing magnetic flux that is coupled into the induction coils so as to produce an electrical waveform (electrical power). For example Nikola Tesla Alternating-Electric-Current Generator patent no. 447,921 dated Mar. 10, 1891, is an example of one of the first commercially successful rotational generators that couples a rotating shaft to generate electricity power. The linear induction generator was first described by Faraday in the 1830's, and is documented in U.S. Pat. No. 3,537,192 as a mechanism to teach and demonstrate Faraday's law of induction to students in a classroom or laboratory environment. Such linear generators are characterized by a magnet approaching, moving through, and exiting an induction coil.
In a linear generator the time rate of change of magnetic flux is related to the speed at which the magnetic assembly approaches and passes through the induction coil (in addition to other factors such as the strength and physical orientation of the magnetic arrays). The rate of change of the magnetic flux is responsible for the magnitude of the voltage that is generated in the induction coil, and which in the case of a simple magnet and a single induction coil, generate electrical waveforms when measured at the output of the coil. Prior art searches show that the concept of dropping a magnet through an induction coil is used today in practice to sense or count objects as they fall, or to generate small amounts of power (e.g. US 2012/0235510 Francis FIG. 2) but no prior art reference has been located by the Applicant of the present application that can generate significant power (Kilowatts or Megawatts) for industrial and consumer use. Hence many of the concepts required for large scale power generation described herein are unknown, never utilized, undocumented or otherwise not manifested into various embodiments by science and industry today. This is due at least in part to the brilliance and success of Nicola Tesla whose original concept for rotational power generation is in use universally and remains virtually unchanged after more than 100 years of use.
In the linear generator the flux increases in magnitude as the magnet (associated magnet field) approaches the coil and decreases while exiting the coil. The situation while the magnet exists in, and falls through the coil, is more complex and the power generated depends on the internal structure of the coil itself (e.g. how long the coil is), the orientation of the magnets, its velocity and rotational kinetic energy. If multiple magnets are falling through the same coil at the same time, then there can be undesirable constructive and destructive interference of the electrical waveforms occurring with respect to the induction process. In addition if the magnet (or magnetic array) is rotating and falling at the same time through an induction coil, then the rate of change of flux can be increased if the internal configurations of the magnetic arrays are optimized. Hence the design of a linear generator is not necessarily obvious and straight forward, and the principles concerning linear inductive power generation described herein are then arguably patentable.